One is the PTT (Push to Talk) Foot Switch. Almost every shack ends up with either on of the ubiquitous commodity grade Foot Switches or a home brew Foot Switch often made with the switch unit from a machine tool on homemade cabling.

The commodity switches work, but not always, they are not built all that badly but they are not lifetime products, and as many have several cables you often see one of the cables bundled up with a tie wrap laying next to the switch.

The home brew often use the same superior actual foot switch that is often seen in machine shops. Yet often it is cabled with a audio RCA cable that perhaps has a knot and a grommet for strain relief and ends up breaking down over time.

RadioSport has a better mousetrap – their PTT-FS-RCA is truly a better grade of a common item.

Here is what the unit looks like when it arrives. Nicely packaged in a ziplock which perhaps can be reused when moving your station.

Unit bagged as arrived

Here is the unit out of the bag – the in-the-hand feel already shows off its quality.

Sans Bag (which is even a reusable bag!)

I’ve bought this sort of switch (NOS) off eBay, but not in powder coat finished like the RadioSport unit.

Side View

Never seems possible for use regular folk to get this quality of strain relief, and as the actual cable is a custom product produced for RadioSport we’re not going to find this grade of reinforced cable to use.

Excellent Strain Relief on Top Quality Cable

Terminating the cable is a high grade RCA in gold plate. No hamfest 25-cent bulk in the bins connector, but perhaps the highest grade RCA I’ve seen in a long time.

Gold Plated High Quality Connector

Completing the unit is anti-skid pad made of a very grippy polymer. Combined with the noticeable weight this Foot Switch will tend to stay put compared to the feather weight commodity brands.

Industrial Grade anti-slip pad on bottom

All this at a price point that is affordable, though in interest of full disclosure it is about $20 or so more than the commodity brands. There a similar high quality adapters for radios requiring different connectors.

Here is Radiosport’s own write up:

At last a quality Foot PTT Switch you can rely on.

This rugged industrial grade all metal PTT Foot Switch is just what you’ve been looking for for that DX or Contest or Net Control Station.

This rugged item is truely intended for industrial manufacturing floor use and the construction is there to support this sort of heavy-duty use. I call it the “SuperDuty*” of Foot Switches. Powder coated finish, rubber non-slip pedal and foam rubber cushion on the botton to prevent wandering under your operating position.

The Tri-EX/Tashjian TM-370HD Skyneedle is here at a friend’s trailer yard, where we will do some light refurbishment (scrape and paint some light tin parts that are showing surface rust) and fit the Alfa-SPID RAK Rotor, while we wait for the new base and a few added accessories to arrive.

Here are a few pictures of the tower being removed from storage and transported to my friend’s trucking yard:

Crane lift of the TM-370HD

A bit about the TM-370HD – this is a motorized 70 foot tubular tower that has some pretty impressive numbers.

I have a full set of engineering calculations and the wind loading they cite is roughly five times what my array will be, and perhaps 35 times the weight load is available.

Not certain if the numbers they provided are after application of the designer’s safety factor (would presume so, as they were done for code compliance rather than product engineering) so the ultimate wind loading and weight bearing is truly impressive.

Initially going up is a SP7IDX Hexbeam HD Mark II antenna currently in production, and a W9INN Half-Sloper which I had on the ready.

The Hexbeam will cover 6m to 20m and the Half-Sloper will carry onwards 20m to 160m.

I thought I had another Tennadyne T-8 antenna locally sourced, but the present owner decided he didn’t want to sell it even though he’d just advertised it. I’d been interested in having both the LPDA and Hexbeam up to do some A/B comparisons.

Karl and Norman at Tashjian Towers Corporation have been super as usual.

They have in production a new base for me, and I am adding the work platform (tower already has the ladder) which will allow me to do 98% of service work without a lift.

That the work platform will make an awesome birdwatching and other outdoor pursuit platform hasn’t escaped me either! It is quite likely that it will also open up a way for my getting very high speed internet to this QTH, as aDSL isn’t going to quite cut it for remoting a full Flex-6000 based station.

There are a lot of logistics to go – I have verbals from the professional help to get the base in and the tower up, and I have access to a DitchWitch to bury the conduits needed. ( want to run the power separately from the coax feeds and other control wiring.)

I even have some nice touches to add features, like a set of industrial/maritime intercom units so one will be at the tower and the other in the shack.

I’ll use my usual BuryFlex Coax as supplied by DavisRF with N-Connectors as usual where possible.

The only items to acquire are the Antenna Switch, a Watt/SWR Meter, possibly a station microphone for the Flex-6300 and possibly a Neal Campbell FlexReady PC if I decide not to use the customer server style one I have.

The SkyNeedle, the HexBeam, the Collins Transceiver (with all the extra bits) and a second Palstar AT-Auto tuner were acquired for the new station; everything else came from my back up unit collection. The Expert Amp is coming out of my main shack as I will finally put in the Alpha-9500 that has been sitting in the box for a while.

I have power supplies and lightening arrestors to match my home QTH gear.

Down the road I will most likely add a 4O3A Signature Station Genius SSC-XL and replace the Flex-6300 with another Flex-6700 GPSDO/ATU transceiver to make the Northern QTH and Home QTH closer in design.

Eventually I would hope to share SmartSDR Radio “Slices” between the two QTH’s, with a long term goal of being able to remote one or both stations.

Now to get the Island QTH on the air while everything is put together, my SteppIR CrankIR Antenna with Flex-6300 setup, as used at Rocky Ridge Farm last year, will be pressed into action.

The Boomset is a nice noise canceling AblePlanet Linx Audio unit I had bought one for each of in the house for traveling (mine has the optional Boomset plug-in microphone).

Would be easier if I added a FlexControl and a Mouse, but that would be cheating, right?

Some latency issues in commands issued to the touch screen having a moment lag to action at the Flex-6300.

I did cut back the Frames Per Second and Waterfall motion rate to improve the ability of the WinBook to run SmartSDR 1.4.0

Adding a second slice is possible, but receive only as this whole setup is at the limit of the WinBook’s brain power.

My wife wasn’t happy at my sitting at my office desk call things like “India Romeo Four Mike – Kilo Niner Zulu Whiskey 59 59 001 001 QSL?” though she could see my point that I could be outside working QSOs once the weather allows.

I’m very impressed that SmartSDR has so improved that this is even possible!

Dayton Hamvention 2014 was interesting, though less profound that past years.

First products and exhibits:

An awful lot had nothing new to show. Nada, boring nothing that I couldn’t read about on the internet.

Same no reason to be here applied to pricing – almost every vendor has figured out they can increase sales by offering “Dayton Hamvention Pricing” on-line. Many include free shipping and it is sometimes the case that the sales tax due is less if dropped shipped.

Still plenty of “vaporware” with prototype products being shown year after year with no real product to sell. One questions how many years hams will show up at Dayton with cash in their pocket to buy antenna auto-tuners that never go into production (Alpha is not the only vaporware tuner, where is that long promised Kessler AT-AUTO-II updated unit? [EDIT: as Don Kessler pointed out he was showing a new remote tuner at Dayton 2014 – more on this to follow]) or amps/transceivers/antennas that are “almost there” but have no ship date?

Dayton remains a place where the one-man-band is on equal footing with the robust corporations and mega-corps. Unfortunately many interesting product offerings are “one heart attack” away from being unsupported/out-of-business. Not a terrible thing if one is buying a couple hundred dollar unique product but a real concern if one is considering investing thousands in piece of gear that might be orphaned by the smallest of issues. Ditto on products by companies where the sole proprietor is elderly and hasn’t worked outa succession plan. If you ask there are some surprises where small firms have this wired, bit most don’t.

Let’s talk about Dayton itself:

Less Road Construction at Dayton – sees that some of the “forever projects” have finally finished, though downtown is still a mess.

The Hara still sucks. Same holes in the pavement, leaks in the roof, and grubby nature. Being cool this year odor was down.

More restaurants have been built nearby, which opens up opportunities.

Staff seemed happier. People are people, and the ones I dealt with this year were plainly nice folk.

The affiliated hotels suck. Tales of no hot water at one hotel, heat stuck on full blast at part of ours, messed up reservations and catering (one banquet I attended the hotel staff for the second year running couldn’t manage to open up the cash bar having forgotten criticals like ice, cups, mixers…. or change..) from hell.

The interstate getting there was hammered, under construction, overcrowded and not much fun driving.

Then may particular interests/purchases:

AlphaSpid RAK purchased from Alpha Radios in Alberta will be replacing my Ham-IV. This looks to be the easiest high-resolution replacement. Once the unit arrives I will schedule a lower lowering to do the rotator swap. The Green Heron controller I have should work for the AlphaSpid with a few internal jumper changes inside the controller.

Green Heron will be doing the station integration for my ArraySolutions RatPAK-N remote antenna switch. This is a left over Dayton 2013 project that I arranged to pick up a few bits for as I finish it up.

W2IHY station selector system needs finishing off, again a Dayton 2013 purchased project I didn’t make time to complete. Got my questions answered at the W2IHY booth, so my excuses have to end…

Spoke with Mr Hilberling, and while it would be a budget buster right now I do hope to have one of his radios with amp in the next year or so.

Spoke with Jay at ArraySolutions and I sure am interested in the VNA gear. Maybe this winter, I will get one to learn about it.

Spoke with several of the team at Alpha Amplifiers and they have no idea when I could buy a combination package of an Alpha-4040 Automatic Antenna Tuner and Alpha-9500 Automatic Amplifier. I decided not to buy an amplifier even with the nice show special being offered.

Banquets I attended:

Friday Night – the Collins Collectors Association 80th Anniversary Banquet. Met some really great people but this is the one where the registration was very slow, the bar wasn’t ready nor stocked, and the presentation & drawing prizes were extremely introspective to the hardcore Collins collector. I actually cut out to take a phone call (son Tom KC9JGD relocated that day to near Rapid City SD) and decided to not return. This group faces some challenges as its membership ages which I don’t have a solution to suggest.

Saturday Night – The Flex Radio Systems annual Dayton Hamvention Update Banquet was a pleasant contrast with quick & slick registration, dual stocked cash bars ready to serve and a lot of information about where FRS is going. Only think I think the FRS folk missed is dishing out to each dinner attendee some special swag – pens/hats/pads/pins. Fairly lame door prize drawing for a couple hats, two oversized re-discover radio button/signs, a flex control and a Flex-1500. Seemed like nine or ten items was not enough for nearly 190 attendees. Not enough to build a buzz in the crowd. Otherwise a nice banquet.

Family Matters:

Riding with me to Dayton were my friend George W9EVT from Washington Island and my cousin Bill KC9YBL. Made for a truck full of Extra Class Hams.

Living in the area we met with cousin Kuby N6JSX (Dale to me) and his wife Becky N9KUV.

We meet with more family in Ohio, Chicago and Wisconsin. Good time had by all!

Again I wonder about Hamvention 2015 – should I attend or is next year the one to try Hamcation or Hamcon instead?

It wasn’t for the ease of seeing family and the control of driving, the answer could be pretty easy to go to one of the other shows.

Following up on my predictions of “What will we see new at Dayton 2014?” here are some notes:

A merged Alpha Amplifier/Ten-Tec potentially offering positive news on the long overdue Alpha-4040 Antenna Tuner – no date yet on the 4040 as at least one more major revise is in the works for the prototypes. Closer but no cigar.

Several new evolutionary radios from Icom, Kenwood and Yaesu with continuing emphasis on attractors like D-Star, Remoting, Emcom, integrated GPS/Bluetooth and Contesting. – yup, lots, with the IC-7800 Upgrade of special interest as it is net plug and play.

The brand new Flex Radio Systems Flex-6300 transceiver offering much of what the Signature Series is about at a mass market price point, along with the end of April SmartSDR v1.2.1 which added the awaited Waterfall/Panafall with many other features. There may be a remote possibility of a further SmartSDR update at Dayton. – off to the FRS dinner tonight and hope to have news afterwards.

We should get a first look at the HPA-8000A 1kW Solid State Amplifier rounding out the high performance PT-8000A Transceiver desktop. – they had a single amp in the booth with USA hams likely to get a supply in later 2014 due to FCC approval lead time.

Several Antenna Manufacturers have announced new models, with several interesting LPDA (Log Periodic) offerings tailored to meet the new Flex Radio Systems Signature Series radio requirements.

Connectivity Galore with Bluetooth, In-Shack and Remote connectivity options of every type and style. Expecting to see everything from ZigBee Modules you can solder into your project to desktop setups you can use to remotely operate one of the rent-by-hour stations.

I am sure there will be much more, and hopefully a few surprise product launches too! See you there!